Deep, Deeper, Freakin' Deep!

[1_T_Submariner]

This is easier if you just stay pressurized to 1 atm.

I guess someone had to try though.

 

[String]

Let's face it, for 18 days you really would HAVE to give in and get a p-valve fitted on your suit wouldn't you.

 

[ItMustBeJames]

Comex Divers did:

* In 1977 - 501m in the Meditteranean Sea breathing Heliox

* In 1988 - 530m, again in the Med., breathing Hydro-Heliox ( 49/50/1 ) - 8 days to reach depth, 18 days deco.

* In 1992 - a dive in a test saturation complex called "Hydra 10" took them to 675m after 18 days of compression, again breathing hydro-heliox. One of these lads transfered into a smaller chamber & was further compressed to 701m. Deco. took several weeks.

Where do you find info like that? Is there a book on it?

 

[ucfdiver]

Let's face it, for 18 days you really would HAVE to give in and get a p-valve fitted on your suit wouldn't you.

Is there such a thing as an S valve?

 

[Sas]

Hi DeepSeaDan,

is it possible for you to post links to more information about these dives? Just very interested in all the stuff that went into that dive and how it went. Google throws up a lot of different information when looking for deep dives and none that I could find with a lot of detail.

Thanks!
Sarah

 

[Thalassamania]

Woof! 701 meters?!? That's 2,300 feet!

One question: Why?

And...there may not have been a significant problem at that depth, but I wonder about the cumulative effects of saturation diving that deep for decades. Hmmmm....

Ian

It had to do with something that COMEX was known for as a specialty, "rapid intervention." That mean the ability to fix something underwater in a big hurry. This lead COMEX to pioneer a bunch of things, SurD diving and extreme depth capabilities were just two of their strong suits.

 

[SeaHound]

8 days to reach depth? What did these people eat? How did they eat?

 

[DiverBizz]

hmmmm I think this is the time for Dork Divers. they must have needed something to do over the many days. Really though I do find the information interesting and would like to hear more about their planning and what they really did for food and water, etc.

 

[Thalassamania]

These were chamber dives.

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

btw...did we ever figure out what depth you could suck an 80 down in one breath? I think there was a thread last year about it....

Well for a surface consumption rate (SAC) of 0.6 cubic feet per minute and 15 breaths per minute there are .04 cubic feet per breath at the surface. So to breath a 80 cu ft cylinder down in one breath the ambient pressure would have to be increased by a factor of 2000 (80 cu ft/.04 cu ft/breath). Since there is one atmosphere at the surface, and 33 fsw (or 10 msw) for each additional atmosphere you would have to be almost 66,000 feet down (or 20,000 meters). But the ocean is not that deep. But...if you dug a 6 mile deep mine shaft at the deepest place in the ocean and filled it with salt water you could breathe an 80 in one breath.

Of course the ambient pressure would be 30,000 psi (or 203 MPa) so an aluminum cylinder might well fail. Maybe with steel (yeah right).

You go first.